


Us

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: Squad Goals [10]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Domestic, Family, Gen, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 18:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11491860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.Or, all kinds of family matters, and that proverb is often misquoted.





	Us

The heather is dry and warm and smells of dust. Disturbed, it releases pockets of air, bubbles of earlier summer time melding with the cleaner, fresher sunshine of today. It springs back into place behind the smart black boots, polished to a shine, and traps new time in its secret snare.

The bees buzz by the gold-flecked gorse, making the dark green needles shake and shiver with life. Catching the midmorning sun, they acquire a silver sheen in the light as the spines drag on the hunting jacket.

At the fork in the path 007 stops, hands shoved deep in his pockets, and looks out at his land. A flash of movement catches his eye as a red deer bounds over the heather and bright green bracken, the antlers on the buck still young, mossy and silver. He follows the deer slowly, tracking its path lazily across the moor until he has to veer sharply left. Instead he pads quietly along the small ridge before dropping quickly down into the valley, feet moving almost faster than he can actually manage. If he stops running, he will fall, but he cannot slow either; hurtling headlong is his only course of action.

James’ face is split by a grin and suddenly he is seven and if he reaches home before five then he can have a choc-ice before tea - if he trips and grazes his knee, he might get one anyway, and so the endeavour is low-risk and high-reward.

Bounding with practised ease above the heath to plant a boot on a granite boulder, he propels himself forwards to leap far above the slope. The boulder had been larger in his memory, but the feeling of flying remains unchanged and utterly exhilarating.

James keeps running and running until the granite boulders acquire shape and order, becoming row upon row of neatly engraved headstones with grief etched into each name. He slows now, the ground flattening enough to do so and presenting a peril to those who do not; his nose twinges slightly in remembrance as he passes great-great-uncle Harry’s grave, the stone slightly marred by pink, three-decade-old child’s blood.

He weaves carefully between them, not looking at the stone chapel or the wrecked manor, until he reaches the newest graves. James turns his back on the shell of his childhood home and sits, legs crossed, in front of the stones. _Andrew_ and _Monique_ stare back at him.

James Bond is with his family.

* * *

Eve throws her hands up above her head and dances until her feet hurt, and then some. Her dad catches one hand easily and twirls her elegantly as he passes into the kitchen - the music isn’t really twirling music, but then Jake is doing the macarena at various speeds to everything they play, so. Perhaps it’s genetic.

Her mother calls something to them from the kitchen, but Ben only shrugs in time to Cherry Bomb as it shakes their parents’ flat. Eve dances past her younger brothers, using a killer moonwalk to slide into her mother’s favourite room. “Say again, mama?”

Mrs Moneypenny frowns over her glasses at her daughter, suppressing a smile as well as she can. “Lay the table and turn that racket down. I thought you three weren’t teenagers anymore.”

Eve cups a hand around her ear, backing away. “What? Sorry, mama, can’t hear you, gotta go make a racket.”

She can hear her father’s laughter as she jumps and dances in the living room with her brothers. Her mother tuts and sighs and turns it up some more when Simple Minds plays.

The five of them dance and dance - she’s not sixteen anymore, and it isn’t the summer when the three Moneypenny kids watched The Breakfast Club every day for six weeks religiously, and her kid brothers aren’t kids - but for four minutes and twenty-three seconds it might as well be.

* * *

The day is really about getting Max some new shoes and forcing Lucia to stop reading for at least one day of summer. Maria needs to pick up her hormones from the doctor anyway and Anastasia wants to take some books back to the library, and could Gareth spare a day to go to town with them? Lucia will fuss if she has to go to the library _and_ the doctors _and_ the shoe shop, and it would just be so much easier if -

“Yes,” Gareth breaks in, smiling down the phone. “I can spare a day.”

Lucia contemplates the ducks in the park with severity so great that Mallory cannot bring himself to break it. Instead, he licks his 99 and wonders whether his niece is making her own Mini-Milk last as long as possible in order to tease her brother with it. Whichever way he looks at it, the answer to such musings is _yes_.

A duck quacks loudly at his ankles and Lucia frowns upon it with great majesty. The bird tilts its head, unperturbed, and the little girl nods at it. Her uncle smiles in bemusement as the mallard is accepted as a worthy adversary and allowed to stay.

Lucia curls into his side a little more, feet swinging on the bench. Gareth traces circles and hatched lines into the dust with the toe of his shoes, and silently bemoans the presence of Mini-Milk upon them.

“Mama, how come Lucia has an ice-cream?” Max says, shrill and indignant as he and his parents bear down upon their bench.

Maria rolls her eyes. “Not everything is about ice-cream, Max. Sometimes it’s about giving your parents a break.”

Gareth fishes a pound coin out of his pocket and flicks it to the boy with a grin.

His sister shakes her head. “You are weak, Gareth Mallory.”

“Not everything is about ice-cream, Anastasia,” he parrots, mock-serious. “Sometimes it’s about us.”

* * *

“Shove up, Esther.” The seven-year-old obligingly moves her tucked-up feet to make three whole inches of space on the sofa. “You spoil me, darling, you really do,” Tanner mutters. Esther shrieks, giggling, as he tickles her feet until her legs move enough - for Grace and Georgina to leap into the space made.

Bill surveys the sofa-full of grinning children, hands on his hips. “You’re all awful.”

Mary puts her head around the door. Bill gestures to the children, beaming with varying amounts of teeth. His sister-in-law gives the kids two thumbs-up and a wink. He holds his hands out in silent question at her retreating back.

Bill shrugs. “Nothing for it.” Making a huge charade out of it, he lies on top of them, supporting almost all his weight on the arms of the sofa. The girls squirm and howl with laughter, wriggling in an effort to escape. “Ah,” Bill sighs happily, “this is the life.”

“Noooooooooooo,” Grace manages, using all her nine-year-old strength to almost move her uncle. He beams up at her, folding his arms to his chest and holding hers there as well. She sits up straight, in the ultra-grown-up mode possessed only by young children. “What will Nana say?” she says, playing her trump card with great aplomb.

Bill considers this momentarily. “She’d probably tell the story of how our uncle Richard did the same thing to your dad and I for a whole Christmas.” Esther thinks this is _brilliant_.

There is a fidgeting around his knees and his youngest niece pops up, beaming and free of her uncle-ish constraints. “Spike,” Bill gasps, “you snake.”

“Spike!” Esther yells. “Get daddy!”

“Save us!” Grace laughs.

Edward folds his arms upon arrival, surveying the scene. “Daddy!” the girls giggle.

Spike puts her arms up to him and jumps slightly on her toes. Obediently, he swoops her up and plants her squarely on Bill’s stomach. Ruffling her short hair and grinning, he leaves Spike laughing maniacally in triumph as her sisters call for their father to save them - and properly this time - from their delighted uncle.

* * *

“Hey, cave-dweller.” Q looks up from his laptop. “Clint’s finishing dinner.”

“Ta, Soph.”

“Don’t call me Soph.” Q rolls his eyes. “Specially since I’m Hazel.” His head shoots up, eyes wide in the gloom of his childhood room. His sister cackles. “Made you look. Are you coming, or what?”

“What,” he murmurs. “I won’t be a minute.”

“Don’t make me call Mum,” Sophie says, flicking her long, black hair over one shoulder.

Q frowns at her, incredulous. “Could have sworn you were turning eighteen today, not five.”

She shrugs. “I dunno. You, sitting alone for hours in a gloomy room on a computer doing god-knows-what and not coming to meals on time - you certainly seem fifteen again, and I guess that would make me five. So,” she tilts her head, pretending to think and knowing she’s won, “you started it.”

He snaps his laptop shut. “Fine. Fine. I’m coming.”

Sophie grins in triumph, skipping down the hall to the dining room where Hazel is doing her best to play Toto on a ukulele. Q instead goes for the kitchen, permitting his mother to smooth the hair out of his eyes and his step-dad to hand him two plates piled high with rice and vegetables.

After the meal, his sisters blow out the candles on their cake and pretend to know, telepathically, what the other wished for, just like every year since they found out they could bother the other kids with it.

“I know your work is like, super-secret-but-totally-not-evil-we-promise,” Hazel says later as they wash up in tandem. It’s the sad part of Gladiator and even hearing the music through their aged TV set is making them tear up, so the pair are, as always for this film, coincidentally somewhere else. Q looks at her, waiting for the follow-up. “But it’s not super dangerous, right?”

“Not so much for me, no.”

She nods. “For your boyfriend, though. It is for him, isn’t it?”

Q pushes his glasses up his nose with soapy fingers and sniffs.

“Sorry.” They wash and dry in silence for a while.

“Fiance, actually.” The words burst from him, sudden and a bit too loud in the quiet of clanking cutlery.

Hazel’s eyes, when he looks up to meet them, are wide. “No way,” she breathes. Q gives her a small smile and goes back to scrubbing the pot. “Oh my gosh! Why didn’t you say earlier?!”

He nudges her shoulder. “It’s your big day, Hazy. You’re a big girl now. I can wait until tomorrow.”

She huffs a laugh. “Well, clearly you can’t, so.” Hazel nudges his shoulder back. “No-one calls me Hazy any more.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She gives him her funny, tilted half-smile. “I like it.”

* * *

The door to Bill’s apartment has four keys, and Q and James have to fight over which one of them gets it. Tonight, however, they are expected and both Bill and Cat are at the door to greet them.

“Mmm, slobbery.” James rubs the dog’s tummy as she rolls on his feet.

Bill laughs from the kitchen. “Go on through, I’m bringing food.”

“I’ll help,” Q says, picking up two loaded plates in response to Bill’s thankful smile.

James tracks the dog through to where Eve is, as is traditional, dancing to whatever song was in Bill’s CD player. Tonight, Gareth is tapping his toe along to Greg Laswell and Eve pulls James in to dance with her until the dinner is on the table and ready to eat.

Afterwards they eat ice-cream from a tub in the middle of the table, provided by Gareth. They don’t talk about work, but the traffic and the weather and the existence of the multiverse and what they’re watching on TV and whether it is or isn’t painful to hear Bill and Gareth attempt to converse in French. The flat rings with laughter and love and James leans back in his chair to take it all in. He runs a hand along the grain of the table, watching the ring on Q’s finger flash in the light, and smiles and smiles and smiles.

James Bond is with his family.


End file.
